![\"Great](\"http:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/wiki\/File%3AGreat_Dane_K02.jpg\")
<\/a>Strangely, Danes use the French name for the Great Dane: grand danois.<\/p><\/div>As we\u2019ve seen, Danish and English share en god del\u00a0<\/strong>(a good deal) of common vocabulary. This should make it easy for English-speakers to find a footing in the language. The flip side is, of course, that the gates are opened for false friends and stuff. Now let\u2019s look at another joint venture: verbs.<\/p>\n Verbs are parts of speech that mark action or state. (Giving the other phrase elements a time frame \u2013 nouns like \u2019dog\u2019 or adjectives like \u2019red\u2019 are pretty timeless.) In dictionaries they are usually listed in the infinitive (an uninflected \u2019basic\u2019 form), which in English is sometimes introduced by the little word \u2019to\u2019: I like to dance, I\u2019m afraid to swim<\/em>. Danish also has an infinitive marker, which is at<\/strong>: Jeg kan lide at<\/span> danse, jeg er bange for at<\/span> sv\u00f8mme.<\/strong> (In the spoken language \u2013 save in very formal settings \u2013 this at<\/strong> it is usually pronounced like the word og<\/strong> \u2019and\u2019, that is, more or less an \u00e5<\/strong> sound.)<\/p>\n Very well, let\u2019s move on to inflection! Just like English, Danish has two classes of verbs: strong and weak. This wording is basically a way of saying that some verbs (the weak ones) can\u2019t make it \u201don their own\u201d, they have to get the help of an ending in order to refer to past actions and states. In English, this ending is -ed<\/em>, which has nearly identical twins in the Danish endings -ede<\/em> and -et<\/em>: I dance, I danced, I have danced.<\/em> Jeg danser, jeg dansede, jeg har danset.<\/strong><\/p>\n The strong verbs are more like chameleons in that they change their \u201dcolour\u201d rather than having something added. The strong verbs can be a real nightmare for foreign learners of English, who have to rehearse: begin \u2013 began \u2013 begun; bite \u2013 bit \u2013 bit; break \u2013 broke \u2013 broken, and so on and on. But English-speakers learning Danish should just relax<\/span><\/span>. There are fewer strong verbs in Danish, and an awful lot of them are almost identical to the English ones: bide \u2013 bed \u2013 har bidt<\/strong> (to bite), skyde \u2013 sk\u00f8d \u2013 skudt<\/strong> (to shoot), synge \u2013 sang \u2013 har sunget<\/strong> (to sing), etc.<\/p>\n One very important difference between the English and the Danish use of verbs is, however, that the -ing form (present participle, as in I am talking to you<\/em>) hardly exists in Danish. Yes, there is -ende<\/strong>, which is used to make adjective-like participles out of regular verbs: thus en dansende hund<\/strong> means \u2019a dancing dog\u2019. But only bad translators from English would ever say things like\u00a0hunden er dansende<\/strong><\/em><\/span> \u2019the dog is dancing\u2019! In Danish, we just use the simple verb form. Thus hunden danser<\/strong> could mean either \u2019the dog dances\u2019 or \u2019the dog is dancing\u2019, depending on the context.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" As we\u2019ve seen, Danish and English share en god del\u00a0(a good deal) of common vocabulary. This should make it easy for English-speakers to find a footing in the language. The flip side is, of course, that the gates are opened for false friends and stuff. Now let\u2019s look at another joint venture: verbs. Verbs are…<\/p>\n